Return to .500 eludes Padres in opener vs. LA

SAN DIEGO -- For seven innings Friday night, Yu Darvish stymied the Dodgers so efficiently that -- even though he hadn’t pitched more than seven innings all year, even though the Padres love Robert Suarez and Josh Hader at the back end of their bullpen -- it was at least worth wondering whether Darvish had earned himself the eighth.

But the Padres trust Suarez and Hader implicitly to lock down those eighth and ninth innings. In large part, it’s what helped carry them past Los Angeles in a tightly contested National League Division Series last October. So when manager Bob Melvin made the decision to lift Darvish after seven, nobody in the San Diego dugout batted an eye.

“Nothing against it,” said Darvish. “Hader and Suarez were fresh in the bullpen.”

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Added shortstop Xander Bogaerts: “I think any day of the week, you’d take Suarez in the eighth and Hader in the ninth with a one-run lead.”

Sound as the Padres felt their process was, results did not follow. Darvish exited, and things spiraled on the bullpen in a 10-5 series-opening loss to the Dodgers at Petco Park.

“We get down to the last two innings, and we have those two guys fresh and ready to go, we feel like we’re going to win the game,” Melvin said.

Instead, four Padres relievers, beginning with Suarez, combined to allow eight runs over the final two frames. On the day the Padres learned they’d be without right-handed starter Joe Musgrove for the foreseeable future, the eighth and ninth innings added insult to literal injury.

The tenor of the game shifted when the grind-you-down Dodgers offense got into the San Diego bullpen. A ruthlessly efficient Darvish required just 82 pitches to record the first 21 outs. It took Suarez, Tom Cosgrove, Scott Barlow and Luis García 67 pitches to record the final six.

“Just a bad day,” Suarez said through Spanish interpreter Danny Sanchez. “It’s over with. Tonight is over with. Onto tomorrow. Today was just a bad day.”

Suarez, of course, was sidelined for four months with an elbow injury before making a late-July return. He has been largely excellent in six outings since, leaving the Padres with little reason to doubt whether he was the right choice for the eighth. On top of that, Darvish finally started to teeter in the seventh, allowing a run on James Outman’s cue-shot single.

“When we have Suarez and Hader, and [Darvish] just gave up a run in the seventh to make it 3-2, we felt good about where we were going,” Melvin said.

The cruelest part? Suarez wasn’t all that far away from escaping the eighth with the lead intact. With two on and two out, Suarez threw a 101 mph sinker at the knees. David Peralta somehow managed to shoot a game-tying double down the left-field line.

“I felt like it was a good pitch,” Suarez said. “In my opinion, he’s probably just trying to make contact there. He was able to do that.”

Suarez followed by throwing two balls to Jason Heyward, before Melvin opted for an intentional walk and a favorable matchup with the righty-hitting Chris Taylor. But Taylor worked a seven-pitch walk himself, forcing in the go-ahead run. Cosgrove entered -- same result, a J.D. Martinez walk. From there, the Dodgers poured it on.

In the end, it could only be viewed as a missed opportunity in a season full of them. But this one stung a little bit more. The Padres entered the weekend having won five of six, playing their best baseball of the season. Then, they went 3-for-16 with runners in scoring position, and Fernando Tatis Jr. had a home run robbed -- and, still, they were four outs from returning to .500 for the first time since May 11.

And, no, that’s not the ultimate goal. The Padres have their sights set much, much higher than that. But if they'd like to reach the postseason, if they'd like to make another deep October run, if they'd like to achieve all the goals they set out for themselves in 2023, surely they first have to get to .500.

“It’s another one of those games that we’ve been through this year that’s been really frustrating,” Melvin said. “We’re right on the verge of getting somewhere we wanted to go. [Reaching] .500 would’ve been great today if we’d beaten these guys in the first game.

“Next thing you know, they’ve got 10 runs on the board. Another tough gut punch for us, but typically we come out and respond the next day.”